


Resting in Peace Was Never an Option

by riais, TwisterTheCat



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M, a lot of stupidity, some mentioned homophobia and Nazis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 20:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riais/pseuds/riais, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwisterTheCat/pseuds/TwisterTheCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small, experimental, and completely ridiculous ghost story in which Erik is perpetually annoyed and Charles refuses to acknowledge that there is actually a ghost coming out of the tv set.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resting in Peace Was Never an Option

When Erik bought the house, he had rolled his eyes when the realtor had mentioned the complaints of the previous tenants. Despite his upbringing, Erik had never been much one for superstition, and he certainly was not going to pass up on such a cheap house just because a few yuppies were claiming it was haunted.

At first, there were just the occasional sounds that came with buying a house built nearly a century ago. Creaking pipes, wood that groans as you walk across it, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, Erik met Charles.

After that, everything escalated. It turns out that ghosts get jealous, or possibly just homophobic. Erik could never tell if it was just upset that someone was distracting him from staying home all of the time to torment or if it just didn’t like his choice in bed-partners. Nevertheless, it seems that ghosts could be oddly possessive, especially the ghosts of Nazi sympathetic doctors that died sometime in the mid sixties and were still very much attached to the living world. (Erik, in a fit of boredom, had actually researched the history of the house. He still refused to acknowledge the ghost, despite the fact it had taken to drawing swastikas on his bathroom mirror in soap) Dr. Schmidt had been shot three times by his lovely, if angry, wife, a carnival fortune teller who eventually became the owner of a prestigious jewelry store chain specializing in the sale of rather expensive diamonds.  
The first time Erik brought Charles home, the faucet in the kitchen kept turning on and off, the pipes wouldn’t stop rattling, and, most mysteriously, the TV kept switching on to Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. (‘Maybe he doesn’t know how to change the channel,’ Charles would suggest later. ‘Not that he exists, of course.’)

Charles managed to, with some amount of grace and poise, ignore the fact that Erik’s house was probably haunted. At the constant closing and opening of the living room windows as the movie was playing during their third date, he casually asked Erik, “Is it always so drafty in here?”

To which Erik made some monosyllabic reply. He was hardly paying attention to the movie, or to the windows, or to whatever fucking noise was coming out of the kitchen (what the fuck was even going on in there, anyway) but instead paying attention to the way Charles was pressed up against his arms, and the hint of a smile around Charles’ mouth.

He had a hard time thinking that the evening was going anything but well.

In fact, it was going so well that the majority of their clothes were on Erik’s bedroom floor before the movie even finished. As Charles slipped off Erik’s belt, he stopped him long enough to reach over to the bedside table and procure -

“Just a second,” he muttered. The drawer was empty except for an unopened box of condoms. Unlubricated condoms. He checked under the table, and then under the bed, and then in any drawer he might have put it in. After a moment, he just whispered under his breath, “Schmidt.”

“Erik, if you’re looking for lube, I have a bottle in my car. I can just go get it.”

This managed to derail his his train of thought on the price of exorcisms in today’s market. “Wait, why?”

“Darling, I wasn’t going to take a chance that I wasn’t getting laid tonight.”

(They found the bottle outside of Erik’s bedroom window, nestled on top of the ominous thorny bushes that grew around the house. Charles looked at it speculatively, and picked it up. “Do you suppose he was watching? He did go out of his way to try to cockblock you.”

Erik stared.

“I’m just saying, we should charge him next time. Do you suppose ghosts use paypal?”)

***

Charles blinked. “Wait, so he was a Nazi? What’s he going to do when he finds out you’re gay _and_ Jewish?”

Upstairs, a window exploded.

Erik just glared.

***

A few hours before their seventh date, Schmidt jumped out of Erik’s bedroom closet. At this point, Erik had become accustomed to the eccentricities of living with a ghost and swiftly grabbed the spray bottle by his bed. “For the love of fuck, I haven’t even showered yet,” he muttered as he squirted the ghost with holy water. “I’m taking Charles out to dinner tonight. I don’t have time for this.”

This of course meant that, as he opened the shower curtain, a certain ghost was waiting for him. “No.”

The ghost stared, then decided the best course of action was to make a grab for Erik’s face.

He dodged out of the way and pointed at the door, his teeth bared and his eyebrows drawn together in anger. “Out. Now.”

The ghost disappeared, his face betraying a somewhat mild embarrassment.

Schmidt reappeared again later in his bathroom mirror just as he was navigating a particularly tricky spot along his jaw as he was trying to shave. Unable to see what he was doing, he nicked himself. He cursed rudely at the image in the mirror,“Oh, just get over yourself. She probably shot you because you were such an annoying bastard. It’s been fifty years, it’s time to move on.”

***

A few months later, Charles was attempting to move in. He was, for the most part, successful, although if he put down a box unsupervised it tended to end up in the bushes outside or, if he was particularly unlucky, on the roof. At this point, there was an unspoken agreement between Charles and Erik that they were never to mention the ghost inside the house, as that would be affirming the ghost’s own idea that it exists.

Later that night, as they sat in the rather expensive restaurant that Erik had taken Charles to in order to celebrate finally unpacking all of his things (Mostly textbooks, to be honest, and an ungodly number of sweaters, of which Erik was sure originated somewhere in the sixties.), Charles took a moment to voice something that he found particularly concerning.

“It’s just, blood coming out of the walls? Really? How is that even physically possible?”

Erik sighed.

“I mean, what kind of ghost makes blood come out of the walls? What is that even going to accomplish? It just dirties up the wallpaper, which was, to be honest, hideous anyways. I suppose it’s an excuse to renovate, but really. I wonder if I could take samples? If it’s actually blood there should be DNA present, I would think.”

Erik facepalmed, “No Charles,” he said calmly from behind his hand, “you cannot take samples of the blood coming from the walls.”

He kicked Erik under the table. “Why not?”

He didn’t answer. They ate the rest of their dinner in silence.

***

On those days when Charles finds himself home alone, with just a pile of papers to grade, he takes to watching Ghost Hunters and commenting on it. The problem with teaching an introductory biology course is that, unfortunately, is that grading anything for it is by definition, boring.

“Oh my god,” he muttered as he corrects the structure of cytosine on a paper, “why do they think that’s even indicative of a ghost? It’s just the windows moving up and down. That happens all the time. It’s just physics.”  
He glanced up at the screen and rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, it’s all very spooky. ‘ _Oh I think I heard a moaning noise_!’ I’m sure you did. It’s called living in an old house. They do that.” He sighed. How do you even confuse a nitrogen with a carbon?

As if to make a point, Schmidt chose to pop out of the television screen.

Without bothering to glance up for more than a moment, he reached into the bag of rock salt lying next to the couch and casually threw it at the screen. “The picture’s messing up again,” he remarked to the test, “I should get Erik to look at it. He’s much better with electronics than I am.”

He waited to smile until the sound of static stopped, and the familiar sounds of the Syfy commercials had returned to the room.

***

Erik continued to live as he normally did - via a combination of stubborness and refusing to admit there was an actual problem. Occasionally, Charles would hear snippets of him talking (ostensibly to himself).

“Stop rattling the pipes, it’s really annoying. You woke Charles up last time. It’s hard enough to get him to sleep as is.”

“I will call a Rabbi. Don’t make me.”

“For fuck’s sake, get out of the cereal box. That’s not even menacing, just stupid.”

***

Charles found the whole predicament somewhat amusing, until the ghost decided to cross a line.

He walked into the living room, holding an empty coffee mug. “Erik,” he said.

“What?”

“Erik, the ghost has made the tea go bad. I didn’t even know tea could go bad. We’re going to have to do something about this.”

Erik sighed.

“Do you think there are exorcists in the phonebook? Or some kind of website? I suppose we could call a priest. Catholics do exorcisms, don’t they?”

He spun around to face him, “No.”

Charles blinked a few times, “What?”

“Charles, we are not calling a catholic. Any religion that involves symbolically drinking blood shouldn’t be the people you call to get rid of ghosts.”

He opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then finally managed to respond, “Fine! Just. Call someone. Please. My sister had that tea imported from _England_ , Erik. England.”

That night, Erik finally gave in and called a rabbi.

***

The man who appeared at their door two days later was wearing a leather jacket and had the kind of sideburns that Elvis would have envied. “You called about a ghost, bub?” he said as Erik answered the door.

“Are you even Jewish?” he asked, not even bothering with a greeting of any kind.

“I’m Canadian,” the stranger said as Charles appeared behind Erik.

“That’s not an answer.”

Charles opened the door the rest of the way and invited the... rabbi in, turning to Erik to say, “Does it even matter? I just want to drink tea again. Coffee isn’t the same.”

“You realize you don’t have to be a british stereotype all the time, don’t you?” Erik responded, somewhat unkindly.

“I also don’t have to suck your dick, Erik, _but I do it anyways because I like to_ ,” he said, raising his voice somewhat. The last few days had been rather rough on Charles. In addition to the tea incident, the ghost had tampered with a number of his favorite sweaters and kept deleting the episodes of Ghost Hunters International that Charles had been recording.

Erik stared open mouthed at Charles for a long and very awkward moment.

The rabbi cleared his throat. “So, about that ghost...”

***

Despite looking nothing at all like a rabbi (and honestly, Erik doubted very much that he actually was), he actually managed to rid the house of the ghost quickly and effectively.

“Honestly,” Rabbi Howlett told them as he collected his paycheck, cigar tucked firmly between his teeth, “he seemed to be getting pretty tired of you two anyways. He probably would’ve given up eventually.”

Erik scowled and tried not to grab the check back from him. It probably helped restrain his arm that Charles was actually holding on to him at that point, ready to drag Erik off to the bedroom to celebrate the moment the door was closed.

Although he would probably be making a nice cup of tea, first, come to think of it. By the time their visitor had left and the door was closing, Charles had immediately disappeared into the kitchen. Erik sighed, rolled his eyes, and followed after.


End file.
